Samsung Group’s leader, Jay Y. Lee, appeared before a South Korean court on Monday, awaiting a ruling on whether new allegations including accounting fraud and stock manipulation will send him back to jail after more than two years of freedom.

Prosecutors last week asked the court to issue an arrest warrant against Lee, culminating a probe into a controversial 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates that they said helped facilitate Lee’s plan to assume greater control of the group.

The risk of more jail time for Lee who has led the group since his father’s heart attack in 2014, has cast a pall over the conglomerate and its crown jewel, Samsung Electronics Co, whose annual revenue alone is equivalent to 12% of South Korea’s gross domestic product.

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Egyptian shares jumped on Sunday after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced on Friday it had reached a staff-level agreement with Egypt for a one-year, $5.2 billion standby loan to help it grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.

The benchmark EGX30 index was up 3.7% in early trade. The index has fallen 18.8% this year, mainly due to the pandemic’s effect on the economy, including a shutdown of the tourism industry.

The IMF said the agreement, which must be finalised by the IMF’s executive board, would safeguard economic gains achieved by Egypt over the past three years and put the country on a strong footing for a sustained recovery.

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Most bourses in the Gulf ended higher on Sunday, a day after the OPEC+ group of oil producers agreed to extend record production cuts until the end of July, with Egyptian shares boosted by a preliminary deal on a standby IMF loan for the country.

Saturday’s deal between OPEC and other producers led by Russia prolongs a pact that has helped crude prices to double in the past two months by withdrawing almost 10% of global supplies from the market.

Dubai’s main share index jumped 4.6%, its biggest intraday gain since April 7.

In Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s de facto leader, the index was up 0.8%, with Al Rajhi

Oil giant Saudi Aramco, meanwhile, gained 0.6%.

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South Africa’s rand rose against the U.S. dollar early on Monday as global risk sentiment improved, although poor trade data from China, the country’s top trading partner, prevented further gains.

At 0645 GMT, the rand traded at 16.7840 per dollar, 0.15% stronger than its close on Friday.

A surprise recovery in U.S. employment lifted hopes of a quicker global economic revival after weeks of lockdowns aimed at controlling the coronavirus pandemic. The economic data still show the impact COVID-19 has had.

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Finance Minister Ibrahim Elbadawi on Sunday said Sudan began talks this week with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a non-funded programme that could pave the way for international financial support.

Khartoum is in desperate need of financial help to reorganise its economy. Inflation has been running at nearly 100% and the currency tumbling as the government prints money to subsidise bread, fuel and electricity.

The talks mark a thaw in Sudan’s relationship with the IMF. Until now it has been unable to tap the IMF or the World Bank for support because it is still listed by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism and has $1.3 billion of IMF arrears.

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Administrators at state-owned South African Airways asked creditors on Monday to approve another delay until June 15 for the publication of a business rescue plan for the cash-strapped airline.

The plan was meant to be published on June 8, after several earlier delays. The administrators said in a letter to creditors that their latest request to delay the plan followed a letter from the attorneys of trade unions representing SAA employees asking for an additional one-week delay.

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A market survey by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has shown that some banks are breaching its Consumer Recourse Mechanism Guidelines for Financial Service Providers.

It has vowed to enforce all legal tools available to ensure compliance by the financial institutions.

Among the key findings were the inadequate time given loan defaulters to repay their loans and under reporting of customer complaint data to the central bank.

According to the Bank of Ghana, its onsite examinations lasted for four months; between November 2019 and February 2020.

The team from the market conduct office looked at six broad areas such as Board and Management oversight of the complaints handling function, unfair banking practices and privacy and data protection issues.

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The revenue accruable to the Federal Government from the sale of crude oil is estimated to drop by a cumulative sum of about N140bn in May and June this year following oil production cuts by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies.

OPEC and its allies, a group called OPEC+, decided in April to cut oil output by a record 9.7 million barrels per day to shore up oil prices after they crashed massively following the widespread lockdown measures targeted at halting COVID-19 spread.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylvia, who confirmed the reduction that was done in May, further stated that the country would continue to comply with the agreement of OPEC+.

At the 179th Meeting of the OPEC Conference on Saturday, the Secretary General, OPEC, Mohammad Barkindo, explained that the voluntary production adjustments of 9.7 million bpd would be in May and June 2020.

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Electricity generation companies on Sunday kicked against calls by the Senate for a reversal of the privatisation of the power sector.

The Gencos also announced that the indebtedness of the power sector to electricity producers had risen to about N1tn since November 2013 when the industry was privatised.

The Gencos argued that reversing the privatisation of the sector was not the solution to the current abysmal status of the power industry while opposing the position of the Senate

The Association of Power Generation Companies, an umbrella body for the Gencos in a statement said It is very pertinent to state that the reversal of the privatisation exercise of 2013 is not the solution to resolving the current abysmal state of the sector.

The APGC said the situation had a very high potential to negatively impact the inflow of foreign direct investments to the country.

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According to latest statistics from the National Pension Commission on Friday the

total pension assets under the Contributory Pension Scheme rose by N359bn from N10.2tn as of the end of December 2019 to N10.57tn as of the end of April 2020 despite the challenges in the economy occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic.

The commission disclosed that the bulk of the fund, totalling N7tn of 66.25 per cent of the funds had been invested in Federal Government of Nigeria’s securities.

The acting Director-General, PenCom, Aisha Dahir-Umar, said the scheme was important in the face of contemporary developments in Nigeria’s pension landscape and the Nigerian economy as a whole.

Some of the funds were invested in agency bonds, supra-national bonds, commercial papers, foreign money market securities, and open/closed-end funds.

Other investment portfolios where the operators invested the funds are Real Estate Investment Trusts, private equity funds, infrastructure funds, cash and other assets.

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